Recent Study Finds Health Care Aides at High Risk of Burnout

Aug 17, 2018

A recent study confirms what the MGEU has been saying on
behalf of health care aides for years: despite a strong belief in their
professional abilities and satisfaction in their work, they are at a high risk
for burnout.

The study, conducted by Carole A. Estabrooks and Stephanie
A. Chamberlain and published
in the International Journal of Nursing Studies, surveyed almost
1,200 health care aides from 30 personal care homes in Western Canada. They
found that health care aides, despite finding meaning in their work and
believing strongly in their professional abilities, were at an elevated risk
for emotional exhaustion.

“In our study, we found that care aides work efficiently,
sometimes under challenging conditions and with a strong sense that what they
do is meaningful — but the risk for burnout is great.”

As Estabrooks and Chamberlain correctly point out, the role
of health care aides is central to the quality of care in hospitals and quality
of life for residents in care homes. Yet until recently, the issue hasn’t
received the attention it deserves because when the health force is studied,
typically health care aides and registered nurses are lumped together by
researchers. When focusing a study specifically on health care aides “you
discover care aide burnout in Canada is rampant” said Estabrooks and
Chamberlain.

“I commend the researchers for looking at this important
issue,” says MGEU President Michelle Gawronsky. “If you talk to someone on the front line, they’ll tell you that they see the impacts of burnout every day –
they’ve either experienced it themselves or they see it in their co-workers.”

While the study dealt exclusively with the issue of burnout
in care homes, Gawronsky also emphasized
that burnout is a significant, wide-ranging problem in other areas of health
care, including in the community where the
time allotted to provide home care is woefully
inadequate.

“We’ve been advocating for many years to provide more time
for health care aides and home care attendants to perform their duties, and for
appropriate staffing levels because workers
are getting burnt-out. Health care cuts are hurting their ability to provide
quality care. We have to put care, not budgets, first.”

The study proposes a number of recommendations to deal with
the issue of health care aide burnout. Among them, the researchers call for an
improved work culture, including strategies to engage health care aides in
decision-making about the residents they care for.